Are you curious about a one-year delay? I explained it in my first income report.


The beginning of May 2016 was crazier than usual, and that means quite a lot coming from me.
38th Income Report May 2016During the first 6 days of May, I did a ton of prep work before the launch. I had been engaging my FB group; I wrote a book description and got it proofread.
I got the cover draft and put it for voting in various FB groups. I had been adding in the last-minute bullet points at the end of the chapters. I asked my friend to proofread those changes. I formatted the manuscript and created the draft version of the book in the KDP panel.

On 6th of May (well, it was 7th, 2 am in the morning for me), I published Making Business Connections That Count and hit a bed. It was the night from Friday to Saturday. I didn’t do much during the weekend; I only sent emails to my beta readers asking for reviews and posted a couple of FB live videos in FB groups.

The Buck Books promo was scheduled for Sunday, thus my frantic pace.
I went back to business on Monday after the Buck Books promo. I sent a broadcast to my email list. From then on, I slowed down to a normal pace.

The Cover Story

I have a funny (only in hindsight) story to relate about this launch. I got the cover drafts just a few days before the launch date. I harvested feedback in FB group during the night (for once the time difference between Europe and USA worked to my advantage) and sent my choice to HappySelfPublishing who did the cover for me.

The email got lost.

Luckily, I vented about the lack of cover in live video in FB group where the owner of HSP is active, and she went through their archive and sent me the cover in the morning. But I didn’t know about it, and I didn’t have a cover. I had to publish the book. I did it at 2 am, because I meticulously edited the cover, moving pieces of it over the image to cover the watermark of a stock photo. The image was crowded, and in the thumbnail size my very poor work wasn’t visible.

Find 10 differences 😀

When the cover arrived, I immediately switched it.
Only to discover on Monday that, in a hurry, Jyotsna sent me the version with a watermark on the cover!
Aaaargh!!!

I switched the cover again to my botch.

HSP quickly provided me with the right version, and I uploaded the new cover one more time. Keep in mind that it takes Amazon about 72 hours to replace cover images in the store. It took almost a week before the final version of the cover was displayed in the store.

Lesson:

I know I mentioned this a few times already in my income reports, but you really should prepare your book launch in advance. If you don’t have all the necessary elements ready – a book description, book cover and a manuscript – you’d better hold on for a few days.

Unfortunately, I’m very guilty of setting a deadline and trying to bend everything to it. In my case, I have a good excuse. I always start my book launch from the Buck Books promotion, and it has to be scheduled well in advance.
For the next three weeks, I came back to my routine of writing and publishing Quora answers. I tweaked some details of Making Business Connections That Count. For example, I changed the category and I worked on creating its paperback version.

3rd Anniversary

On 26th of May 2016, I celebrated my 3rd anniversary of officially becoming an author. A Personal Mission Statement: Your Road Map to Happiness had been published exactly three years prior.
Two very nice things happened that day.

First, I crossed 1 million views on Quora. It took me 5.5 months to reach this number. Quora sent me a notification. That was an impressive milestone.

Million views! If I would have been delusional, I could’ve said that one million people read my stuff. Of course, Quora counts as “a view” if a reader stops over the answer for some time (10 seconds?), so even when someone skims through, it counts. And many readers read multiple of my answers.
Still, it felt good.

Secondly, that evening I was interviewed by Steve Scott for his podcast. Wasn’t it a brilliant way to celebrate that anniversary?

Three years ago, I had been going through the publishing process of my first book. On one screen I had a window with KDP panel; on the other screen I had Steve Scott’s book, 61 Ways to Sell More Nonfiction Books, opened. I used his knowledge to accelerate my learning curve. Three years later, he interviewed me as an authority writer, and I shared my expertise about leveraging Quora for authors and bloggers.

Just. Wow.

By the way, in May, I was also featured in the book titled How to Be an Author: 36 Real Authors Talk Writing and Publishing.

Even now, almost 8 months later, writing those facts down in my income report, I felt moderately accomplished.

The Launch Results

Making Business Connections… sold only 290 copies during the launch. It sold 42 on its Buck Books promo, one of the worst results I have ever had with them. After switching to $2.99 price, it didn’t do much better. It sold another 55 copies.

The book wasn’t a complete flop, but it performed much worse than I hoped for.

The Income Report Breakdown

Income:
Amazon royalties: €351.67 ($393.87)
CreateSpace royalties: €34.09 ($38.18)
Draft2Digital royalties: $15.22
Coach.me fees: $32.03

Total: $479.3

Costs:
$150.75, VA’s remuneration
$30, View From the Top Community fee
$29, Aweber fee
$45.45, royalties split with co-author
$265, Business on Purpose mastermind
$21.5, proofreading services on Fiverr
$114, various promos of Making Business Connections That Count
Total: $655.7

Net Result: -$176.4


Previous Income Report: April 2016

Thirty Eight Income Report – May 2016 (-$176.4)

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